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Fixing EVs’ ecological and social problems needs circularity and transport redesign

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Decarbonizing transportation systems generally involves replacing traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) cars with electric vehicles (EVs). But any conversation about decarbonizing transport that only talks about cars is way too narrow, says Jessika Richter, associate senior lecturer at Lund University in Sweden, who researches policy related to circular economies and the technologies associated with them. In the first episode from a new series of the Mongabay Explores podcast all about the circular economy — the effort to design goods to be less resource intensive, from their manufacture to disposal and recycling — Richter details the environmental and human rights impacts associated with the supply chain and life cycle of EVs, and how society can account for and mitigate these. While fully electric vehicles don’t emit carbon during their use, they still have environmental and human rights impacts all along their supply chain associated with mining and manufacturing, particularly for their batteries. Experts say this entire auto supply chain needs an overhaul. However, Richter says solving the supply chain issues is only part of the equation. “It’s not a problem of just cars emitting, but here we have a whole transport system that needs to be rethought, and mobility needs that we need to think of as users.” This will require large systems change in the way we design and use public infrastructure and rethinking whether we even need vehicles in many instances. “We need to go back to, exactly, what do we need? And are there different ways we can…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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